The tissue industry has a long-felt need for very high decaying temporary wet strength system. Poor decay translates into the clogging of pipes and septic systems. While many consumers desire wet strength in their tissue, there are consumers who do not use tissue that exhibit poor decay properties. A tissue with high initial wet strength and outstanding decay properties would have a very significant benefit for consumers.
Temporary wet strength systems are available that provide both high initial wet strength and outstanding decay. These systems generally include a wet strength agent and a degrading agent composition that work together to provide the desired initial wet strength and decay properties. However, these systems present significant challenges to the manufacturer during application of the degrading agent composition to the tissue product. One of the problems related to the degrading agent concerns stability of the composition as a function of time. Oftentimes, the degrading agent composition is formulated and stored in large quantities well ahead of its actual application. It has been discovered that the viscosity of these prior art compositions significantly increases as a function of time, which renders these formulations difficult, if not impossible, to uniformly apply using existing equipment and pumps. In some instances, the increase in viscosity is to an extent that the composition is no longer a pumpable fluid.
Employing a degrading agent composition in the temporary wet strength system that is stable and easily applied during manufacturing to produce tissue products that exhibit both high decay properties and high initial wet strength would provide numerous benefits to both consumers and papermakers.